Mersch hopes ECB supervision leadership in place by January 2014

Published September 21, 2013

| Reuters

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FRANKFURT – The European Central Bank should be able to staff the leading positions of its new supervisory authority by the end of the year, Executive Board member Yves Mersch was quoted as saying on Saturday.

The ECB is slated to start overseeing the currency bloc's 6,000 banks starting late next year. It is seen hiring about 1,000 staff by then.

"Our goal should be to have the organizational structure fully staffed and operational by January of next year," Mersch told German daily Handelsblatt, and added that the central bank would hire about 200 to 300 supervisors this year.

In the interview to be published on Monday, but parts of which were made available to news agencies on Saturday, Mersch also repeated that the ECB would not start asset-quality review before governments had put in place appropriate backstops.